Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton was indicted Thursday by a grand jury for allegedly illegally transmitting and retaining classified documents.
The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Maryland, charges Bolton with eight counts of unlawful transmission of national defense information, as well as 10 counts of unlawful retention of national defense information.
Prosecutors accuse Bolton of using a personal non-government email account and a messaging app to transmit at least eight documents to unauthorized people that contained information classified at levels ranging from secret to top secret.
Seven of the transmissions allegedly occurred during Bolton’s time serving as Trump’s national security adviser in 2018 and 2019, while Bolton allegedly sent another document just days after President Donald Trump removed him from the administration in September 2019.
“For four decades, I have dedicated my life to the foreign policy and national security of the United States. I would never compromise those goals,” Bolton said in a lengthy statement, saying the impeachment is part of a pattern of “Donald Trump retaliation” against him since he left the first Trump administration and published a tell-all book.
“I look forward to the fight to defend my lawful conduct and expose his abuse of power,” Bolton said in the statement.
The decision to charge Bolton comes on the heels of indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, as President Donald Trump continues what critics call a campaign of retaliation against his perceived political enemies.
Federal agents in August. They searched Bolton’s residence in Maryland and the Washington, D.C., office related to allegations that Bolton possessed classified information.
Prosecutors say one of the documents listed in the indictment “reveals information about future attacks by an adversary group in another country.” Others allegedly contain information about foreign partners sharing sensitive information with the US intelligence community; intelligence related to a foreign adversary’s missile launch plans; intelligence on leaders of a US adversary; and another that detailed plans for covert action by the United States government.
Former national security advisor John Bolton listens to a question from a student at the John F. Kennedy Jr Forum at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 29, 2025.
Brian Snyder/Reuters
The indictment accuses Bolton of abusing his position as national security adviser by sharing “more than a thousand pages” of information in “diary-type entries” about his daily activities with two recipients identified only as “Individual 1” and “Individual 2,” who prosecutors say are relatives of Bolton.
Sources told ABC News that the family members referred to in the indictment as ‘Individual 1’ and ‘Individual 2’ are Bolton’s wife and daughter.
Bolton’s wife was present at his home the day the search was executed almost two months ago.
It was not immediately clear who Individual 1 or 2 is believed to be.
Prosecutors further allege that Bolton unlawfully retained documents, writings and notes containing national defense information reaching the levels of top secret information and sensitive compartmented information in his Maryland home, stored both in paper files and on various personal devices.
The indictment says that at some point after Bolton left his position as national security adviser, a cyber actor believed to be associated with Iran hacked his personal email account and gained access to classified information he had previously emailed to his relatives.
When Bolton reported the hack to US authorities in July 2021 under the Biden administration, prosecutors say he did not inform them of the supposedly sensitive national security information he shared.
What Bolton and his lawyers say
Bolton has denied illegally removing classified materials from his time in government and has said no such information was published in his 2020 memoir “The Room Where It Happened.”
In his statement Thursday, Bolton said his book was “reviewed and approved by appropriate and experienced career officials.”
Regarding the 2021 email hack, Bolton said the FBI “was fully aware.”
“These allegations concern not just his focus on me or my diaries, but his intense effort to intimidate his opponents, to ensure that he alone determines what is said about their conduct,” Bolton said in the statement, referring to Trump. “Dissent and disagreement are fundamental to the United States constitutional system and vitally important to our freedom.”
Bolton’s attorneys have denied that he ever mishandled classified information and said documents investigators found in a search of his home and residence were no longer considered classified.
“The underlying facts in this case were investigated and resolved years ago,” Bolton’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement. “These charges arise from portions of Ambassador Bolton’s personal diaries throughout his 45-year career – records that are unclassified, shared only with his immediate family, and known to the FBI as of 2021. We hope to demonstrate once again that Ambassador Bolton did not illegally share or store any information.”
“There is one level of justice for all Americans,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a Justice Department statement announcing the indictment. “Anyone who abuses a position of power and endangers our national security will be held accountable. No one is above the law.”
The 10 documents that the indictment alleges were illegally retained by Bolton were allegedly seized during searches of his home and office in August, and contained information similar to documents Bolton allegedly transmitted illegally during his time as national security adviser.
The investigation is being conducted out of the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland, unlike the Comey and James investigations that are being led by the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, who sources say brought Comey and James’ charges against the advice of career prosecutors.
Comey, accused of lying to Congress, and James, accused of mortgage fraud, have denied any wrongdoing.
Last month, a federal judge unsealed a redacted version of the affidavit prosecutors had gathered to execute the court-authorized search of Bolton’s home. Most of the document concerned allegations surrounding the publication of Bolton’s book, which the first Trump administration unsuccessfully sued to block.
The federal judge who oversaw that lawsuit expressed serious concerns about whether Bolton had included highly classified information in his book that could potentially compromise national security.
On the day Bolton’s home and office were searched, Trump said he was “not aware” of the searches, but later called Bolton a “sleazebag.” Referencing the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago home in 2022 in his own classified documents case, Trump told reporters that searching his home is “not a good feeling.”
Triumph pleaded not guilty in June 2023 to 40 criminal charges related to his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House in 2021, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information and took steps to thwart government efforts to recover the documents.
After Trump was re-elected president last November, the case was dropped due to a long-standing Justice Department policy that prohibits the prosecution of a sitting president.
Trump, when asked about Bolton in an interview with Fox News in the Oval Office in June 2022, said: “He took classified information and published it during a presidency. It’s one thing to write a book after. During. And I think he’s a criminal and I think, frankly, he should go to jail for that, and that will probably, possibly happen. That’s what should happen.”
